Use your resume to take the reader on a journey

Olivia was a previous client and came to me for an update of her resume. Formerly a Patient Access Services manager, she had most recently engaged in a contract training role and sought to leverage this experience to transition into a full-time position within a healthcare training setting.

Positioning strategy...

Even though Olivia had been engaged in a contract training role for just shy of a year, I had to make page one of her resume "scream" training. While Olivia's other experiences were value-added given they included elements of training, they would not position her as a strong learning and development professional, hence all of page one of Olivia's resume focused on her most recent and related experiences.

Opening Olivia's resume with a brief headline, she was immediately positioned as a Healthcare Industry Trainer / Manager. This headline provided the framework in which all of the rest of the content would be evaluated. Flowing into core skills written directly beneath the headline, within the hiring manager's 4-to-7-second screening process he/she would know exactly who Olivia was, and how she could add value. A tagline followed the introductory headings presenting a very high level overview of Olivia's key experience along with a quote -- from a trainee's evaluation -- validating her claims.

Next, in a Select Strengths section, I used a creative format to engage the reader and extend the ever-so-brief screening process. In this section I bolded some key skills I wanted to present as Olivia's areas of expertise. Following the bold skills came further exploration of her efforts and outcomes in each of those areas, providing the "showing" to her "telling" and ensuring a full presentation of what she had contributed and how it added value to her candidacy. On the right of that two-column format, I presented an additional list of her core skill areas, this time organized in an inverted pyramid shape in order to "pull" the reader's eyes down the page.

In Olivia's Professional Experience section I highlighted her title prominently to reinforce that she had performed in a similar role to which she was now seeking. Again, through quotes from her students' evaluations, I immediately validated her claims -- previously and to come -- and continued to position her as a subject matter expert in the training field. Next, in a paragraph format, I presented an overview of Olivia's contract role, being sure to highlight qualifiers when possible in order to continue to draw the reader's gaze down the page. Lastly, in bullet points, I focused on the areas in which Olivia truly added value, being sure the most important parts of the bullet points were bolded in order to help prioritize the content for the reader.

Strategy recap...

If Olivia's resume had been written without a "strategy" to position her how she now wanted to be seen, she would have simply been looked at as a Patient Access professional with a brief stint as a trainer. Instead, by developing and implementing a well thought out strategy, creating a design to purposefully pull the reader through her resume, and selecting strategic formatting elements to reinforce where we wanted the reader to look, Olivia was positioned not for what she has done in the past, but instead for what she wanted to do in the future.

Olivia's success...

Olivia emailed me to tell me, "Love the design of my resume! In fact, during the interview process the human resources rep commented on how much he liked it!"

Samantha Nolan is a Certified Professional Resume Writer and owner of Ladybug Design, a full-service resume-writing firm. Do you have a resume or job search question for Dear Sam? Reach Samantha at dearsam@ladybug-design.com. For more about Sam's resume writing services, visit ladybug-design.com or call 614-570-3442 or 1-888-9-LADYBUG (1-888-952-3928).